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Lyn Worthen presented to the STC Intermountain chapter tonight on running your own business as a technical communications consultant. She covers almost everything you need to know as a consultant, including rates, billing, contracts, marketing, taxes, business structures, hours, salary, tools, locations, niche services, portfolios, client communications, and more.

Here’s her presentation description:

Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it on your own as a consultant or contractor is a lot like riding the tide. Sometimes the tide is “in” and you have plenty of work to keep you happily tapping away on your keyboard; the projects are queuing up, the money is flowing, and all’s right with the world.

Other times, the tide is “out” and you find yourself walking on a desolate beach, staring out at the horizon, waiting for your ship to come in — and, if you’re lucky, picking up the occasional small job still lurking in a hidden tidal pool; money is scarce, and as the siren song of Corporate America tempts you back into the relative stability of captured employment, you question the wisdom of continuing to go it alone.

And then there are the “tsunamis,” those times when you have more work than one person should ever be expected to handle; yet in spite of the fact that you’re barely keeping your head above water, you’re reluctant to say “no” to any of it because you don’t know how high the floodwaters will rise or how long the drought that is sure to follow will last.

About Lyn Worthen

Lyn Worthen’s company is Information Design Co: Technical Communications Consulting, based in Utah and serving local, national, and international clients. Lyn is a member of the STC, the Utah Women Tech Council (WTC), and National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). You can find out more about her through her Linkedin page. To contact Lyn, send her an email at lynw@xmission.com.

This Wednesday, Jan 20, there’s an Intermountain STC Chapter meeting at 7 pm. in the Sandy library. Lyn Worthen will be speaking on running your own technical communications consulting business. Here’s an excerpt from her description:

Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it on your own as a consultant or contractor is a lot like riding the tide. Sometimes the tide is “in” and you have plenty of work to keep you happily tapping away on your keyboard; the projects are queuing up, the money is flowing, and all’s right with the world.

Other times, the tide is “out” and you find yourself walking on a desolate beach, staring out at the horizon, waiting for your ship to come in — and, if you’re lucky, picking up the occasional small job still lurking in a hidden tidal pool; money is scarce, and as the siren song of Corporate America tempts you back into the relative stability of captured employment, you question the wisdom of continuing to go it alone.

And then there are the “tsunamis,” those times when you have more work than one person should ever be expected to handle; yet in spite of the fact that you’re barely keeping your head above water, you’re reluctant to say “no” to any of it because you don’t know how high the floodwaters will rise or how long the drought that is sure to follow will last.

Everyone is invited, both STC members and non-members. Cost is free (since it’s held in a public library). Read more details here.

Scriptorium is presenting a free webinar on the DITA features in Madcap Flare this Tuesday at 11 a.m. EST. Here are the details:

Presented by Sarah O’Keefe, this webcast demonstrates using MadCap Flare to create WebHelp from DITA-based content. Topics covered include:

• Importing DITA content into Flare
• Map file handling
• Cross-references and links
• Relationship tables
• Conrefs
• Conditional processing

By the way, you can keep up with other upcoming webcasts from Scriptorium by subscribing their newsletter, keeping up with their site’s feed, or clicking the Scriptorium graphic in my sidebar.

Some months ago I created a half a dozen quick reference guides for an application that would have a potential audience of thousands of users (after it cleared the beta phase). The size of the audience gave me hope that I would actually create documentation to be used by more than a handful of people outside the internal workings of my organization.

I created the guides in Adobe InDesign because it seemed to make sense for the situation — the application was relatively simple, and there were just a few roles. I crafted the layout and design carefully, branding the guides with the same color and feel as the application. I meticulously ensured each task was described with concision and accuracy, and I limited the text for each guide to one double-sided page to avoid intimidating the users. During each application update, I reviewed the guides against the new use cases and updates and made sure the instructions matched the new functionality. Read the rest of this entry »

Given that it’s a new year, a lot of people are writing about trends and predictions in technical communication. Ellis Pratt at Cherryleaf has an interesting post on the Top 10 Trends in Technical Communication for 2010. Larry Kunz has a post on Technical Communication Trends in 2010. Sarah O’Keefe chimed in with 2010 Predictions for Technical Communication. And Ben Minson has Ten New Year’s Resolutions.

Rather than predict or comment on trends in our industry (which I already did here), I’d rather describe the actual directions I’m going in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

At a department Christmas social the other week, we had a special meeting following lunch. During the meeting, people spontaneously shared their feelings about working for the Church or other thoughts they had. More than a dozen people stood up.

Although it wasn’t called such, the meeting was similar to a “testimony meeting,” which is something that Mormons do once a month for their church meetings. During these meetings, rather than listening to several members give talks, anyone who feels the desire can spontaneously walk up to the front podium and say pretty much whatever they want for as long as they want. This can be both exciting and dangerous, or dreadful and dull, depending on who gets up and what they choose to say.

Some testimony meetings are inspiring. Others are filled with long spaces of tense silence. At work, whenever we allow people to share their thoughts or feelings at the end of meetings, it highlights the interesting mixture of church and work — a mixture that feels new and sometimes awkward.

As I read up on the subject, it turns out that spirituality in the workplace is nothing new. In fact, it’s a huge trend in business management. Marques et al even say that “spirituality is the new competitive edge” (Spirituality in the Workplace). Read the rest of this entry »

One of the tough paradoxes of the technical writing field is that you can’t get a job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. Or so it seems.

A reader recently wrote to me explaining how she decided to write manuals for her existing job as an account maintenance clerk, even though the task of writing documentation wasn’t in her list of required duties. Doing so transformed her role. After learning more about her experience, I asked her to write a guest post, so here it is.

Post by Sarah Pruitt

Deciding to become a technical writer was easy. But finding the experience and the time has proven unforgiving. My job is not based on writing; in fact, writing is rarely needed. Between working full-time at a bank doing account maintenance (which is equivalent to data entry and entry-level coding) and going to school part-time in the evenings, I don’t find much time to create writing samples for a portfolio.
Read the rest of this entry »

Most people take time off during the holidays, so if you don’t, you end up mostly sitting alone at work, wondering why you’re not taking time off too. I wanted to follow Penelope Trunk’s advice about pursuing your pet projects while working during the holidays, but instead I was trying to finish a project with an end-of-year deadline.

The project I’m working on is critical, but it has only about 3 to 4 users, most of whom are already familiar the application. One of the users even drives the design. The manual I’m writing, which is nearly 200 pages, is mostly a safety measure for business continuity planning. I don’t expect anyone will ever read it.

It’s a project I managed to procrastinate for months, working on other projects, even outside the scope of my regular assignments. The main deterrent, I believe, was my perception that no one needed the manual. The users seemed to be getting along fine without it.
Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent email to me, Jake from California (not his real name or location) writes,

I’ve spent most of today exploring the world of technical writing, and I find that you’re very central and visible. I’ve read, listened to, and watched a good deal of content you’ve produced, plus viewed snippets of threads on the STC listserv where you either weighed in or were referenced.

If I can prevail on you for just a few minutes of your time, I’d like to ask some advice. To summarize quickly, I decided on a writing project in the mid-80s that got me into PCs and DTP software. That led to steady work in software documentation for the next ten years with much of it overlapping the development of the web. I learned several tools for that, as well. My most recent job has taken me off in another direction, and I’ve lost my familiarity with this industry for a few years.

I’d really like to return to what I know and like best, and I know I have a pretty steep learning curve ahead. The nearest STC chapter is more than three hours away from me, and I don’t know how active they are. I was disappointed to see that the STC is having difficulties. I read David Farbey’s and your posts on it. Most of my time today was spent in gathering names of software applications currently in use to begin an investigation. And I looked on a few jobs sites, too. It’s been a busy day.

Could you advise me where to spend my time and energy? Besides your blogs and others I like it that I find, the TECHWR list, and possibly joining STC to gain access to their resources, how would I inform myself on current trends in documentation? When I entered the field in 1991, I did so because I had learned one software application and joined a local software user group through which a recruiter found me. I couldn’t be that lucky a second time! At the moment, I feel like I could spin my wheels for quite some time without getting anywhere.

Thanks for any nudge you might be able to give me.

Jake

I am always flattered to read comments like this. I don’t know what the experience is like searching for trends in technical writing, but it’s neat to think that I’m “very central and visible.”

I often respond to reader questions on my blog because other readers have the same question. What are the trends in the technical writing, what tools do you need to know, and how do you position yourself as a strong technical writing candidate in a competitive job market?
Read the rest of this entry »

How do you go from 5 authors to 47, all collaborating on the same documentation? This is the issue Anne Gentle wrestles with in her post Collaborative Authoring — Tools and Costs. She explores everything from Author-it Live to Drupal, Mediawiki, Alfresco, and SharePoint, including cost breakdowns for each tool.

Anne also cites research from Forrester about the rising trend of collaborative authoring:

37% of organizations surveyed in Forrester’s Q4 2008 enterprise and SMB software survey consider implementing a collaboration strategy important in 2009

My Thoughts:

I think collaborative authoring will continue to grow in the future. Large, expensive solutions may give way to more popular, open-source options. As more groups adopt open-source solutions, the open-source solutions will become stronger. Any time you have thousands of developers and users behind a platform, they create a surge of extensions and themes, hacks and tutorials, enhancements and workarounds.

No single project team can compete with the collective contributions of thousands of developers on a global scale. And just maybe — here’s a thought — the best platforms for collaborative authoring are those platforms that are collaboratively constructed themselves.